Tag Archives: action

Yes, friends, more feedback today from a Make It Happen client. And like so many MIH clients, this person (whose name I will not use, since he has a somewhat public job) is working on a writing project, specifically a screenplay. He writes

“As the script is a side project and I have a day job as [redacted], it’s hard to find consistent time to work on it.”

Tell me about it, honey. So many of our MIH clients are working on writing projects. Slowly. Very slowly. I’m sure I have previously expounded on the many tricks for getting writing done — try fifteen minutes a day, try a page a day, or as my grandmother said “Park your ass in the chair and finish the damn thing.” I am obsessed with Wendy Laura Belcher’s bookWriting Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks, which has very wise words about the fear of writing that I think would also be applicable for finishing a screenplay. Finishing things is surely important. But for those with day jobs, maybe just having a side project is equally important, even if it goes nowhere fast.

In other words, don’t worry too much about finishing it. As Pavement said, type slowly.

Feedback today from Lea, a Make It Happen client whose goal was to make money to finish her dissertation. This is a goal close to my heart, since I was a PLWD (person living with a dissertation) until May, which I finally finished and defended mine.

Lea reports that she is in the midst of making it happen. She says:

“I was aiming at one source of funding and simplifying (less jobs = less hectic); I’m going to be teaching a few different classes but it looks like the bills are covered.”

Lea, I can only offer you the advice that my grandmother gave my mother when she was finishing her dissertation: “Park your ass in the chair and finish the damn thing.” I made it happen, and you can too!

Feedback today from Make It Happen client Matt. Matt’s dream was to make “all is love” happen in the “not too distant future.”

As of August 5, 2010, Matt reports he is in the midst of making it happen.

He writes

Once the “Make it Happen” team clearly explained what the quantum guys and the Eastern mystics were/are talking about — All is nothing by vibrations, etc — I was able to let the past and future be content-like. Thanks, Matt.

Make It Happen is participating in the 2010 edition of The Swedish Dance History. Its a book, it is not particularly Swedish or historical, but it does take a broad view of dance. This includes what we do at Make It Happen and what our clients do when they make it happen.

We’ve given them a list of our former clients’ dreams, goals, and achievements, which will be published in the 2010 edition of The Swedish Dance History. (Without any clients’ names, of course!) And in awesome MIH style, the editors and publishers of The Swedish Dance History put the entire book together in one day at ImPulz Tanz, aka the Vienna International Dance Festival.

Check out this great video of them making last year’s book happen at ImPulz Tanz, which I believe has a shiny silver cover.

We met Make It Happen client Josephine Decker at Figment on Governor’s Island a few weeks ago and talked about the screenplay she wanted to make happen.

Last week, Josephine got in touch about applying the Make It Happen approach to something a little larger, namely the BP oil spill in the gulf. Josephine has created a performance piece about the spill which is taking place this week, Tuesday June 29 to Saturday July 3, 2010 in Times Square.

The piece involves dancers balancing buckets of oil on their heads (okay, its actually blackened water since oil is toxic). It also involves a Make it Happen element, with Josephine and her collaborators talking to pedestrians about what they can do about the spill, oil use, and climate change more generally.

Can individuals really make it happen for the environment? Does changing our personal habits work, or do we need to make it happen at a larger level, by working on policy, industries, and big organizational cleanup projects? Go to Times Square this week and talk about it with Josephine. Make it happen, make us proud!!